I mentioned in my last post how busy I’ve been recently, and put it down to having watched The Secret on DVD. If you haven’t come across this you should check it out, google Oprah and The Secret and I’m sure you’ll find out all about it.

Well I’ve been putting some of the suggestions into practice for a while now and the results are incredible. I’ve spend the past week having an absolute ball, doing work I’ve really enjoyed, getting new clients at every turn, fixing problems left right and centre. But the best day was Wednesday.

I got two unexpected calls from companies looking for maintenance contracts. (Bear in mind that I’ve actually given up trying to sell maintenance contracts after spending the best part of 3 years having doors slammed in my face). I had a couple of other calls from clients with problems that looked very serious but that were sorted out really quickly. It just felt as though I had a magic wand and I could fix any problem instantly.

So, it was all going so well that I decided to buy a lottery ticket. I bought it with complete conviction that I was going to win something on it. I was practising the attitude of gratitude thing well before the draw was made. And when I checked the numbers I found I had won €62. I think in future I’ll only do the lotto when I’m feeling that positive. No point in wasting money.

There don’t seem to be too many people left who actually believe that Julie Amero was deliberately attempting to expose children to pornographic images. (The notable exceptions to that appear to be the prosecutor in Connecticut). I wrote about this case in more detail here.

Last week the Judge Hillary Strickbein postponed sentencing until March 29th at the request of the defence team. Apparently the postponement had been requested in order to give a new attorney and consultant time to familiarize themselves with the case.

With most of the supposedly “expert” technical evidence apparently having been discredited, Assistant State’s Attorney David Smith claims that Ms Amero did not do enough to protect the children from exposure to pornography, (eg shutting down the computer). The substitute teacher had already informed colleagues that there was a problem with pop-ups on the PC, and had been told to ignore them. She was also under instruction NOT to turn off the PC.

I wonder if Mr Smith will use the same logic to pursue the individuals responsible for ensuring the school had proper technology in place to protect them from spyware. And whoever was responsible for ensuring teachers had full training on the PC’s. And whoever allowed the PC’s to be implemented without effective password controls. And whoever wrote and circulated the spyware that infected the PC in the first place.

Based on what I’ve read of the case to date, Julie Amero should be way down the list of people culpable for this. If Assistant State’s Attorney David Smith was hoping to make a name for himself out of this case, then he has certainly succeeded. Sadly though it looks as though justice, (and Julie Amero) were poorly served in the process.

I never expected this blog to spend so much time talking about teachers, but following on from last weeks story about the conviction of a teacher in Connecticut after what appears to be nothing more than spyware, it looks like Russian teachers are not safe from the law either.

Apparently Alexander Ponosov, a headmaster in a remote village in the Urals, is facing up to five years in a Siberian prison and a fine of 266,000 rubles ($11,580) for copyright infringement. It seems that Mr Ponosov, purchased a computer containing pirated software for use in the school. It was unclear from the reports I read of the incident whether it was the operating system that was illegal or whether there was other software installed on the PC.

The latest intervention has come from the former Soviet leader and Nobel Prize Winner Mr Gorbachev, who has appealed to Bill Gates to withdraw the complaint aginst Mr Posonov. Gates response appears to have been that this was not a Microsoft issue, it is a Russian prosecutor issue. Given that the current Russion premier Vladimir Putin has also criticized Microsoft on this it will be interesting to see what happens next.